In the breeding or raising of pigs, newborn baby pigs are commonly confined with the sow in farrowing pens. After the pigs are weaned, they are then placed in hog finishing buildings until they are ready for market. These pens and buildings have been traditionally designed to provide feed areas, rest areas and also to provide ease of cleaning and waste removal. Typically, the flooring in such buildings should allow the waste to drop through to a pit beneath the flooring, and in order to accomplish this, various flooring designs have been developed and commercially used.
One such flooring is a wire mesh flooring which consists of woven wire in which the warp and cross wires are woven together in a manner to provide rectangular shaped openings between the wires to permit the passage of waste. The wires must be spaced sufficiently close so that the pigs' feet cannot slip through the openings but permit the easy passage of waste to a pit beneath the floor. One disadvantage of the common wire mesh flooring is that it tends to produce abrasions on the legs, knees and feet of the pigs. This is because the woven wires are typically circular in cross-section and therefore provide a very small contact surface which tends to abrade or cut the animals. Attempts have been made to overcome the discomfort caused by this type of flooring by flattening the round wires, but this weakens the wires and results in an undesirable deflection that makes the pigs nervous.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,573,432 issued on Mar. 4, 1986 to John F. Boxhorn and George R. Boxhorn, there is disclosed improved flooring in which warp wires are used that are flat on top and which have a cross-sectional shape so that the widest portion of each wire is at or near the top surface. The warp wires are then woven with cross wires which extend alternately over and under the adjacent warp wires. To accommodate the cross wires, the top surface of each warp wires has a depression formed in t at each junction with the cross wire so that the cross wire will not extend above the top surface of the warp wire. This does provide mesh flooring which has a flat top surface that is more comfortable and minimizes the abrasion problem. Although this type of flooring is an improvement over the traditional wire woven flooring, the flooring does not have high resistance to slipping and can be difficult to install in existing installations because the bottom surface is not sufficiently flat due to the woven cross wires.
There therefore remains a need for an improved flooring for the floors of hog pens and finishing buildings, which flooring will be durable, provide sufficient traction for the hogs while yet being comfortable for the animals. Such a flooring should also be capable of being installed in existing buildings without substantial modification to the supporting structure.